Don't Go to Sleep to Dream
by PortiaKhalo
Summary: Jenny says there's a Fiona in her apple and her dogs need a reservoir. A birthday story for Yellowglue.


_This was my Yellowglue's birthday wish fulfilled. I love her so..._

I killed Jacob Black for my favorite girl.

I can't tell you when it happened, because that nosy minion of Jasper's would figure it all out in a second. But I can tell you why, and how.

I did it for them; Bella and Nessie.

I'd always wanted Nessie to end up with Seth Clearwater. He was the brave one who risked his life for Bella and me the day we destroyed Victoria, and he was the only one of the "imprinters" that I cared to have stamp my daughter's heart.

Jacob Black had been out of the question the moment his lips had touched Bella's outside our cursed tent. I had heard his thoughts. He was a goner. He was excommunicated from every good thought I could muster from that moment on, and I only tolerated him for Bella's sake.

Carlisle should've done away with him when he went out to the reservation to put him back together, but he has too much guilt. He was there after Jacob's run in with a newborn, with his hospital strength pain killers and his inhuman strength in everything else, and he still saved that bastard.

Guilt and I have been lovers ever since I left Bella, and inadvertently left her in Jacob's care. Nothing will ever weigh more than that. Except maybe Jacob's heart in my hands.

Seth knows part of the truth. But even without knowing the details, he intuits how to love Nessie the right way; with gallant restraint and overwhelming happiness.

They were both so young when they came into this world of monsters and mysteries, and yet they accepted it fully, making it an integral part of who they are, without forgetting their humanity. Theirs would be a wedding of brave, young souls, deserving of each other in a destined, across the universe kind of way.

I had tried to convince Bella that Seth should've been the one to keep Nessie safe when the Volturri came, but she wouldn't listen.

"He's too young, Edward. He doesn't even know his own strength yet!"

"And Jacob does?" It was a moot point. Bella's mind was muted to anything negative regarding Jacob Black.

She is still blind to his manipulation. We, the three of us, are a twisted, incestuous Cain and Abel reborn, walking the crevice between life and death.

Except my name isn't Cain, and I am now, and always, unable to give up my residence near Bella's figurative fire. I am the only one who'll be clinging to her skirts, so that I can pull them up slowly and do things to her Jacob would only dream of.

Damn, I loved the 90s. The nineteen kind, before a damned, beloved teenaged human tied my soul to hers forever. Now my soul lived in Nessie, and I'd be damned all over again if I'd give her away to that Black heathen.

Jacob really was like an elderly family pet who needed to be put down. His incontinent affection and over zealous, lapping, tongue heavy words were disgusting. Mostly, though, I needed Bella to give up hope of ever having that childhood romance she'd once wanted with him, or suruptiously transmitting that desire to our offspring.

They had gone for a walk, Jacob and Nessie, and Jasper and I were following them like eighteenth century religious nuts because I'd never trusted Jacob's intentions with anyone in my family. His trail left a stench that was so easy to find, it was a wonder Laurent had ever been surprised by his dog-like appearance.

It was then the plan came to me. After years of aimless plotting I knew exactly what I had to do.

"Jasper, do you ever wonder what it's like to sleep?"

"No, not really." We walked in silence for a few feet before he said anything else.

"But it would be nice to take a small break from all this _feeling_ for a while." We chuckled. Jasper and his feelings were like a human with permanent PMS sometimes.

"I've watched Bella for years, and now even Nessie still sleeps occasionally. I just… wonder what it's like to have your mind stop for a few hours."

The plan was so new, so fresh, that every word that came out of my mouth was exciting. I restrained myself from laughing like a maniac.

We talked it over then, as we kept our less than respectful distance from my daughter and her puppy.

Sleep was a relaxed state, with a slowed heartbeat, and a swirly dreamy mind, we concluded. A sleepy Bella could hardly even lift her limbs, I'd told him, and her words slurred as if she were drunk.

"She was so…stilled." I purposefully left out her nightmares and her sleep talk, fusing both my girls into the image of the perfect, slumbering being Jasper needed to conjure for my plan to work.

"Try it on me, Jasper. It probably won't even work, but think of the gift we could give to Alice with this! She could rest, actually rest, her mind for a few moments."

That was all it took to convince him; he'd do anything for my sister.

We stopped under the shelter of a group of trees, knowing that Jake wouldn't take Nessie too far for fear of our entire family coming after him.

I perched on a tree root, leaning my head against the trunk behind me. Just one sudden movement would topple the whole thing over.

_Timber. _

It was like resting on an eggshell.

Jasper lay down in the leafy undergrowth, prostrate and parallel to the darkening sky.

As his breathing grew deeper, mine grew slower. When his arms fell limp at his sides, I let myself slither down to the ground next to him.

The voices I'd heard in my head all day swirled in a merry-go-round of verbal colors and various pitches; a vocal roller-coaster in my mind.

And then it all stopped.

We couldn't have been out for more than a few seconds, but I knew that if it worked on a vampire as strong as Jasper, that it would've knocked Jacob and Nessie both out.

They were but a hundred feet from us, and even when I sat up, I still felt an eery calm throughout my body.

"Alice is looking for you." I told Jasper. It was true, although not urgent, but he didn't need to know that. He was hazy enough from his own magic spell that he'd believe almost anything I'd said containing the word "Alice".

"Don't tell her about the sleeping yet though, J, let it be a surprise. I'm gonna go catch up with the kids and then I'll be there."

That's how Bella and Esme referred to Jacob and Nessie: The Kids. Even Rosalie slipped and said it occasionally, as if we'd birthed Jake the same way we'd brought Nessie into the world.

It was disgusting, the way that boy had jutted his way into our daily lives, infecting even those he offended most with his shellacked-on smile and lack of appropriate clothing.

When I'd carried him far enough away to leave her undisturbed, I whispered, "Nessie's in trouble" into Jake's sleeping ear.

It took a moment, but, without fail, his body began to tremor as he unconsciously prepared to shift into his most dangerous form to protect my daughter.

Just as a wolf's pelt began to silently trail up his arms, I swiftly nicked an old scar over his heart, one that Carlisle had sewn. He always used an even number of stitches, wanting, eternally, to leave peace in his wake.

Before Jacob's face could become fully disfigured, I cut my own wrist, pressing more than enough of my venomous blood into his marred scare to stop his heartbeat.

He looked, for all the world, as if he'd fallen asleep, half wolf and half man-boy. It was well known in both the Cullen and Quileute circles that all shape shifters would eventually stop changing, and with as many times as Nessie had bitten Jacob when she was young, there was no telling how long he had left.

"She's no good for you because you're not good enough for her." I told his dead eyes.

It must have been a song that had struck some demonic chord in my mind and led me to that point in time. As I walked back to where my daughter slept I hummed "Stuck in the Middle With You" just inside my mouth, never letting the sound escape my lips.

I carried a still groggy Nessie back to the house and explained to the family that Jake had decided to stay out a little longer. We all knew that Jacob was planning to ask Nessie to marry him soon. She was too young by any culture's standard, but even Bella had gotten all wrapped up in the promise of a promise ring from Jacob Black.

He had good reason to stay out in the woods and think. I'd been thinking of this night for years.

Seth was at the house, as he was most nights of the week when he could get away from the hounds that hound him in his head. Esme cooks anything in the world for that boy, and he's got an affinity for eggs rivaled only by Bella's when she was pregnant.

I feel indebted to him in a way. The death of his own father is what brought Bella back to me. I owe him a place in this family.

I owed Jacob nothing. It was his lie that almost killed me.

The plan had always been that as soon as I figured out how to get Jacob out of the way, Seth would step in to fill his shoes.

I slide off my cuff, the one that bore the Cullen Crest, and had I been human, would've left behind a permanent tan line from its decades of wear.

As Seth devoured the rare steak, with sunshine eggs, and Hollandaise that Esme had made for him, I placed my cuff on his lap under the table.

It was our signal. It meant Jake was gone, or at least not in line for Nessie's affection anymore.

When he reached for his napkin and found my crest instead I felt his pulse pound in his ears. I nodded, minisculey and was even more appreciative that my mind had come up with my plan when it had.

Seth, the wolf with the lion's mane, was leaving in four days for college. I'd paid for him to attend four years of school at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff. It was close enough to Bella's hometown to seem nostalgic, and far enough away to discourage visitors. He'd be back in four years, groomed and ready for my Nessie, and she and Bella would've had time to mourn and forget that dog-boy they both thought they loved.

With Seth moving so far away, even the hive mind of his tribe of wolfies couldn't reach the truth. An extended disconnect from them would only serve to make it harder for them to read him when he came back more Cullen than he was ever Clearwater.

We had a huge celebration for Seth the next day. Everyone just assumed that Jake had gone to his Dad's for the weekend, but when he never showed for his pack brother's special evening, Bella began to worry.

As Nessie followed behind Seth's old car on her bicycle, giving him a final send off, I created a diversion to sooth Bella's memory.

I watched my daughter of fourteen, trailing her future husband in a frilly dress Alice had made and her favorite Ray Bans. She wore them with the same awkward enthusiasm they'd given me back in my last round of high school when I'd finally made Bella mine.

She was Seth's now.

A bicycle built for two people made from three species might need a few training wheels, but they could make it. Besides, there was no dead weight left to carry around.

By the time Bella finished cleaning up after the party, even with her vampire speed, I was finished with my "shiny object" to distract her from Jacobian thoughts.

Directly beneath my bedroom window, in a kind of deranged counterpoint to my teenage stalkage of my wife, I'd set up a giant, champagne colored tent. Surrounding the whole area were hundreds of those tiny fake candles that take a small battery and click on. Smoky the Bear was real, and I'd hate to have to kill off another of Bella's childhood, furry friends in the same week.

"You did all of this for me?" She asked, still catching that human amazement in her eyes.

"I'd do anything for my favorite girl."

_Or to her_, I thought, because this time there was no cold, no Victoria, and no Jacob Heater Pants Black to stop me from taking her exactly how I'd always wanted to.

Her long skirt called to me, and I pulled her through the tent-flap, ready to recreate our history, just the two of us.

_Happy Belated Birthday, Miss Yellowglue. Who would've ever thought it would be so difficult to kill Jacob Black? Your ending just came to me this morning in my half-sleep while I watched the baby dream. I love you with all my little heart, even the black parts. You're a cherished and honored part of my life._


End file.
